


Dare to Hope

by Crysiris



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Newt-centric, The Death Cure Spoilers, i can't tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 18:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6435712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crysiris/pseuds/Crysiris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He'd thought them dead, gone, never to return, their hopes and dreams shattered underfoot, their presence gone from this world...And then they weren't, and as soon as he hoped again, they were gone, gone for good." </p><p>In which Thomas runs into the Maze and leaves Newt in with his thoughts.</p><p>Death Cure spoilers!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dare to Hope

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this is my introduction fic. Hi! My name is Crys. I'm a fourteen year old homeschooled girl who spends waaay too much time overthinking fandoms...Like when Newt died and I mourned for a week. T^T RIP Newt. 
> 
> Anyways, I've been wanting to write this since I watched the Maze Runner movie a couple months ago and now I'm finally done. Super happy about that :3 
> 
> Thomas Brodie Sangster said in an interview that he feels like Newt was like Thomas when he came into the Maze for the first time and when Thomas came, it ignited some sort of hope or something like that...BOOM! Fanfic :P I don't ship Newtmas, but there's definitely hints of it here. 
> 
> Also, I listened to a shit ton of music to get me through this. :P Thank you Shelby Merry :) Also Flares by the Script and Safe and Sound by Tyalor Swift :P (I need help. I'm way too obsessed with music.)
> 
> Chuck is OOC, sorry DX I hope you enjoy anyway.

He'd thought them dead, gone, never to return, their hopes and dreams shattered underfoot, their presence gone from this world...And then they weren't, and as soon as he hoped again, they were gone, gone for good.

 

It all had happened too fast. Newt had barely been able to process Alby and Minho's condition over the sound of panicking Gladers and the pounding in his skull. His voice echoed with the others, urging them to safety, but everything seemed disconnected. His sight went into tunnel vision and suddenly all he could see was Minho, dragging Alby's limp body through the dust, several feet away from the closing doors.

 

Newt's mind flared into panic. Alby looked like shit. The wound on his head oozed blood. How'd he even get that? WHY WASN'T HE MOVING!? He couldn't be dead. Minho wasn't hopeful enough to go dragging him back if he was. So what had happened? A Griever attack? Had he just been stupid and jumped off a maze wall?

Newt laughed bitterly at the prospect. The dull ache in his leg boiled to full on agony. He wouldn't dare. Not after what Newt had done. That'd just be showing him right, that there is nothing better to live for, that this whole damn bloody thing is impossible to escape.

 

Minho didn't look much better. He ran, groaning, screaming in effort. Sweat poured down his face in buckets. He was tiring over the load, Newt could tell, and no one dared to run outside the safe haven to help, especially since there was less than a minute till they could get caught in a world of death.

 

Somehow, a sliver of hope for their survival remained. Maybe they could make it. They had time...At least a little. Maybe if everyone bloody calmed down and stopped shouting, maybe his bloody ear drums wouldn't be bleeding...But of course they wouldn't. Who in their right mind would stay calm in this situation? They knew what would happen if Alby and Minho couldn't make it inside in time.

Newt glanced over at Thomas, the Greenie, wondering how he was handling this chaos. None of the previous Greenies in this situation had done well, and almost all of them were either slightly mad or dead and gone. But Thomas's face shone with a determination, Newt couldn't place why, his hands, shaking, clenched at his sides. A different reaction from most of them. Was it just because of his current Greenie status or...

 

One moment too late, Newt saw the gears turning in the boy's head. One moment too late, the Gladers saw a flash of blue run towards the doors...Tommy.

 

Newt's first instinct was to curl up in a ball and cry until his eyeballs fell out. His second was to actually stop the shank. His hand had shot out, clambering to grab at a piece of the boy, praying he could save the boy a short existence, save him until he got hit with a hoe or something...Anything but this, anything but this. Newt was fast, strong even, and he knew that. Being a former Runner helped, but time had abandoned him. The cloth of Tommy's shirt drained through Newt's fingertips as fast as a basket holding water.

 

The walls slammed shut, the sound echoing through the Glade, as if to taunt the silent, dumbstruck boys.

Three Gladers in one day, their leaders and the Greenie, gone, forever. Never to be seen again, unless the Grievers wanted to fuck with them and bring back their bones or something. Other than that, they were gone. Alby and Minho were gone. Tommy was gone.

 

_Tommy was gone._

 

Silence.

 

 _Great job, Tommy._ _Yeah, that definitely would work._ Newt thought bitterly, his habit of pacing and gesturing coming out in the open. _Yeah, you_ _could totally save everyone and shit, no lives lost at all...Oh look! They're gone, never to appear again, just as expected. Of course. You knew that would happen, dumbass. How could we have expected more from them? Anyone who ends up in the Maze dies, everyone knows that! They were never going to make it out, we knew it from the beginning. How could we have have thought otherwise? They're gone. Gone forever._

 

He stopped in his tracks.  _...They're...gone...All gone._

 

Why did Alby have to go out today? He never had to before. He didn't need to. No one went out, especially when something was amiss, and this situation was suspicious enough for it to be a fluke. He should not have gone, and knowing Alby, the leader probably knew that. He knew! Why did he go? Did he have no other choice. (Now that Newt thought about it, choosing wasn't exactly a norm in the Glade.)

But what had come over Thomas and Minho? Alby was dead either way. The fact that Minho had tried to drag him back was ridiculous enough. Then Tommy ran in there...What did Tommy think he could accomplish? What did he think he could change? Was he so naïve that he thought going out there would so much as save a life? The shank seemed smart, annoyingly curious, but smart, at least smart enough to _not_ get himself killed on his first week. Maybe a month or two, but not days after his arrival...And in a more gentle way, for goodness' sake, like falling out of a bloody tree or something. It wasn't fair that he had to die like this, a disembodied scream in the night as something, God knows what, ended him. Tommy didn't deserve that...None of the Gladers who had died out there deserved it. Now three more had died. Three more names to scratch off of the wall, out of their lives.

 

A strangled wail caught Newt's throat as he struggled to keep the tears from falling, struggled against the fact that his closest friends were dead, that he couldn't save the Greenie. Dammit, could he be any more of a slinthead? Couldn't he have just reached out a little further, a little faster, saved at least one of the three lives they'd lost today? Apparently not. Apparently his shortage of abilities couldn't even cover stopping people from suicide. They were gone, gone gone, and nothing could change that. Nothing his little shit head could conjure up could save them now. No hope or determination, nothing, could save them now.

He didn't want to think about what was possibly happening in there. No doubt the three of them were hiding away in fear, hoping to wait out the enemy. Newt couldn't hear the Grievers yet, but soon their wails would fill the camp with terror. Tomorrow, the Runners would find their remains. Bloody rags, pieces of skin, materials that might have been theirs...He shuddered just to think about that. Did he actually want to see remnants of what had been stripped from them? Did he want to be reminded of their names, their faces, their kindness? Did he want to remember any of it?

 

 _Funny_ , he thought as a halfhearted smirk crossed his face, _that's the same thought I had when I was dying._

 

Newt remembered it clearly, the feeling of falling. The fear had left him, eaten away by pure exhilaration. He'd remembered feeling relieved, that he could finally escape this bloody Maze once in for all, not in a conventional way, but still a way. He'd leave this world, forget the pain, forget the empty hopelessness. He'd forget the memories he'd created in the Glade, good and bad. Maybe he should have felt sad, or nostalgic, attempting to lose memories of his friends. He didn't. This was it. This was death. He was flying on the wind, on death's wings, and he'd be taken away to Paradise.

Instead, he had felt his ankle shatter under his weight, and pain, more pain than he'd ever experienced in his life. He didn't remember screaming. He didn't remember the tears slipping down his cheeks. He didn't remember his vision fading into black when he found himself back in the Glade with his ankle braced and wrapped up. All he remembered was the pain.

 

Now he remembered everything. The memories haunted him right before his eyes. He was dying again, an illness eat away at his soul. Dying with Alby, Minho, and Tommy.

 

 

Newt sat, back against the wall, exhausted. It wasn't safe to stay out at night, he knew that more than anyone, but no one was there to enforce the rule for once. He wasn't going to ride out this pity party if his thoughts were interrupted by tossing, snoring, sobbing boys, and it went both ways. He didn't feel like waking the others with his screams.

And they knew what he was thinking about. He could feel their stares of pity on the back of his neck. Yes, they could read him like a book at this point. They knew what he was thinking about. 

 

They'd lost Alby. Now Newt was officially in charge.

 

Losing Gladers was bad enough. Losing Gladers and then having to shoulder the burden of leadership was the worst. Yep, he was bloody second-in-command, not by choice. Definitely not by choice, but Alby had trusted him if he was ever to fall into ill health. Now Alby was dead. Where did that put Newt now? Could he expect the Gladers to follow him as they had Alby? Would they want to follow him, the suicidal shank with the shattered leg? He couldn't just assume they'd agree to it. He couldn't just convince them, or himself, that he could take Alby's place smoothly. Newt, however old he got, would never feel ready for that kind of responsibility. He'd watched Alby crack, slowly but surely, under the pressure of watching so many people die under his watch. He'd seen Gladers constantly in tears, especially the Greenies, wondering if they'd ever find a way out of this hell. He and the others had sworn by every name under the sun , begging for someone to hear them, anyone, begging for someone to take pity on them and fish them out...If that was even possible at this point. If the sadists from the beginning hadn't listened, they weren't going to listen to them now.

 

He hated them, those “W.I.C.K.E.D” people. He hated them with a passion. He wanted them dead, wanted to throw them to the Grievers and see them torn up limb from limb, while he laughed in their faces...Except he didn't. No, that'd be just as bad as what they'd done to him. Even if they got the chance to hurt them...Killing them...Getting revenge wouldn't do any good. It wouldn't bring Tommy, his final hope, back to life.

 

“Maybe they'll make it out.” Chuck's voice came from his left. The little shank was sitting next to him, pulling at the grass in front of him. Newt could see the stress and worry on his face, a look unfit for a child his age. Newt was so emotionally stifled compared to him, as he had taught himself to look the other way while he forced people into the Maze. After a few months, this kid would be the same, dead inside, with the innocence wiped off his chubby face.

How was he supposed to explain Chuck, the kid, still wide-eyed and hopeful, that his new best friend was dead? Newt couldn't expect a kid that age to understand it, a kid so new to this life that he could still afford to _think_ that way. Even after all these years, Newt still didn't understand. Didn't understand, but could still feel the pang in his chest. He envied the kid's hopefulness. Could he bluntly tell Chuck about the murder of his friend? Could he bring himself to be the bringer of that kind of news?

 

“Maybe...” It had slipped out of his mouth, his voice quiet from being scratched raw from screaming. He hadn't meant to say it. He hadn't meant to feed Chuck's false hopes, or his own. He wasn't that cruel. He was lying through his teeth, he had to be. There was no way in hell he still thought they had a chance. He was disillusioned. They were all disillusioned! They didn't have hope! They couldn't have hope! Hope wasn't supposed to be a part of them anymore.

But as soon as Thomas had showed up in the Glade, Newt's hope was building towers, higher than the walls, higher than this little confinement they were forced to call home, higher than the sky's limits...Then immediately crashed down to the ground with Tommy's death.

 

He couldn't be trusted with a concept like hope.

 

Newt's heart fell when Chuck turned to grin at him. “Maybe they'll kick Griever butt and come back victorious.”

 

Chuck was wrong. That wasn't possible. In all the years he'd lived here, wouldn't someone have done it if it was? So many of them had tried and failed to survive outside the walls. Wouldn't everyone still be alive and well and out of this bloody place if that were possible?

But a small part of him questioned the danger of the horror outside the walls, if it was really that bad. No one had survived a night in the Maze, but maybe they hadn't given it their best effort, thought their cause was too hopeless to even try. Maybe those before had wanted to get out of this hell hole, just like Newt had months before. Maybe dying was part of their plan.

Newt's friends could make it if they really put their minds to it, if they really wanted to make it out alive. They wanted out, didn't they? Tommy definitely wanted to get out alive, right? Minho was too stubborn to lose a challenge like this. He could make it. Alby, if he was still knocked out, posed a challene, but they could manage? Right? Minho knew the Maze like the back of his hand. They could find a way to disguise Alby or something.

 

Maybe those three could manage, a dead, empty hope, but still hope. More hope than Newt had felt in all his years of living in this goddamned place. Maybe it was stupid to try. Maybe his heart would shatter as instantaneously as his leg when the Runners found the ruins in the morning. Maybe he'd attempt to fly again if all else failed. Maybe...But if Tommy was trying out there, he at least had a duty to try his best as well.

 

It was a huge jump, crazy, even, with no assurance that he'd even make it to the other side. He might fail to ever live happily again, but he'd try to put on a brave face all the same. He'd try for Tommy, for Minho, for Alby, for everyone.

 

Newt dared himself to hope again. “Maybe.”

 


End file.
